Amalgamated media now!

There is nothing worse than missing a favorite television program that only comes on once a day.

Or it is annoying to hear a few bars from a tune, and the rest of the song gets stuck in your head for what seems like forever.

Despite the fact people are subjected to media constantly, it is a bummer when you miss out on the type you like.

Those days though are coming to an end thanks to the Internet. TV, music and even movies are all watchable with a few simple clicks of the mouse.

Now when most people think about TV on the Internet, YouTube will eventually come up, and for good reason. The site itself was made famous by regular people recording spectacular and hilarious things, then uploading it on the Web site.

It did not take long for people to upload other things on to YouTube like TV shows, classic commercials, music videos, movies, and even media from around the world.

Used by students and professors alike, there is always something good on YouTube. However, a lot of the content uploaded breaks copyright law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The content deemed as "copyrighted material" will be removed and sometimes the infringing account would be banned. Crackdown administratrators are constant and unforgiving to violators. Despite this YouTube remains the top dog in Internet entertainment.

It's not a viewer's only choice for quality online TV, especially if you want something more reliable than YouTube.

Hulu.com and Fancast.com are both good sites that provide surfers with popular TV shows to watch like '24' and 'The Office' as well as classics as the 'A-Team' and 'Gilligan's Island.'

They also provide movies to watch free of charge, the movies themselves are good but dated. Some of them even need a little research to know what your watching (i.e. "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.")

Both sites are similar in features and information they provide; but they do have a few differences. Hulu's site is easier to navigate, while Fancast allows users to find out what is coming on their real TV.

Hulu and Fancast help make the search for your favorite shows easier, but if you know what you're looking for, you can always go straight to the source.

Most TV networks and some cable Web sites have all their shows available for viewing online and charge you nothing. So, between YouTube, Hulu, Fancast and network sites, television is at a beckon' call 24/7. Napster, the infamous free file sharing site that was busting copyrights long before YouTube was even a twinkle in someone's eye, still remains the champ in the music downloading domain.

These days they are a legitimate payment music service with three types of user subscriptions.

The first one, Napster Light, requires customers to sign up and start downloading music tracks for $0.99 a pop. Customers can listen to songs for 30 seconds at no charge.

The regular Napster account is $12.95 per month; it can do everything Napster Light can, and it opens up the rest of the site for use like the radio section and access to unlimited streaming music.

Napster To Go is the best option they have, costing $14.95 a month; it not only combines both previous features but allow users unlimited downloads for their portable media player or cell phones, access to their music collection at any time from the Web site, use of the Napster message boards and the ability to share music from friends who also have the Share Music feature.

However, Napster has a downside. It takes a monthly fee to use the whole site, but that is not unheard of for a music downloading site. Also, some of the music files are not very compatible to iPods, iPhones or iTouches.

iTunes is Napster's biggest competition because the music library is larger than Napster's and requires no monthly fee to use fully; however, users still have to pay for the music with pricing beginning at $0.99 for each track.

The application's greatest strength is that it is not limited to music. A user can buy, rent and download other media such as TV shows, audio books, even music videos right on his or her computer or iPod.

iTunes also has access to podcasts, which are free audio or video content that inform and entertain their listeners on countless subjects. These podcasts can be managed automatically by iTunes to add new podcasts and deletes the podcasts you have reviewed. As excellent as all those features are, iTunes work best as an application for the apple "i products." Also, iTunes is not a Web site; it is an application, and it needs to be downloaded on a computer before it can be used.

Napster is great on the go but is expensive. iTunes has a lot of variety but is better used at home or with an iPod.

Now, movies can be easily brought, rented and downloaded from and also from movie providers like Blockbuster and Netflix.

Both online services, like Napster, are subscription-based with pricing starting at $8.99 per month for a one-disk rental through the mail.

The major advantage to using them is access to an unlimited supply of movies. If users hate them, then they can send them back; if they love them, then they can keep them as long as they want until they find a new movie to watch, with no late fees.

They further provide users an opportunity to rent or buy movies through the web instantly if users do not feel like waiting for a movie to come in the mail. Of course, there are rental fees depending on the movie selected.

"Honestly most things are obtainable through the Internet, you can pay your bills, get your mail. I can't think of anything it can't do," Point Park student Parry Scinta said.

Scinta uses his computer to play games like Team Fortress 2 and, his favorite, World of Warcraft.

"It's the best social interaction you can have through a video game, kind of like hanging out with your friends," he said.